


Second Star to the Right

by monimala



Category: General Hospital
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in early summer of 2012, going AU from when Maxie claims to have killed Lisa and Robin. Miles from home, Lucky sees a familiar face...but she doesn't seem to recognize him at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Star to the Right

Lucky hunches over the scarred tabletop, scribbling lyrics to songs he’ll never write on a bar napkin that’s seen better days. “Happy New Year 2008!” it says in cheap red script. 2008, as far as he’s concerned, was a shitty year…with the ones that came after not much better. But you can’t outrun your past. So, he’s taking the scenic route home, lingering in every truck stop and dive bar between Allentown and Port Charles. 

The bikers give him trouble sometimes, when they see he’s only drinking coffee. Until he jangles the keys to his Harley--he won it in a card game outside Chicago; his father would be so proud--and backs up the silent challenge. Lucky stopped running, but he’s definitely learned how to ride. A “fuck you” to Jason Morgan, maybe. Or maybe just a weary acknowledgment that Elizabeth was on to something when she was obsessed with painting the wind. There’s nothing quite like feeling it whipping past you, and it’s easier to be on the move with a bike.

“Hey! Leave me alone!” The dive is quiet, or at least it was. All of a sudden there is commotion by the bar. A high, feminine screech rising over voicing piling on top of each other in discordant notes. “I did NOT steal your wallet! Do I look like a thief? Please!”

The accusation of theft does nothing to rouse the cop in him. He quit caring about leaping to the rescue of his fellow man after burying Siobhan. It’s the bitchy “please” that gets him out of his seat. He knows that voice. He knows that offended disdain. It goes so perfectly with the dark arcs of her eyebrows and entitled pout of a mouth. “Maxie?” he says as he reaches the guys clustered around her and shoves his way into the circle. “Maxie, is that you?” She’s tiny, Tinkerbell surrounded by leather-clad Lost Boys, but her attitude has always been huge. 

As big as the silver-blue eyes that focus on him with absolutely no recognition. “Whoxie?” she repeats. He’s startled to realize she’s not Tink so much as Wendy. Her hair isn’t the familiar pale blonde; it’s bright red and cut razor-sharp along her jaw line. “Are you going to accuse me of stealing, too, Big Guy?” She bats mascara-thick lashes.

Lucky is easily the smallest guy in the room. “Spencers are built for stealth and speed,” his dad told him when it became clear he had no future as a linebacker. Joneses and Scorpios…he’s not precisely sure what they’re built for. And, for a moment, he actually wonders if he’s wrong. If this redhead dismissing him and turning back to Big Ed and his four burly friends isn’t Maxie after all. She’s supposed to be in jail a hundred miles away, isn’t she? If he had a double, in Ronan O’Reilly, maybe she does, too.

But then his gaze travels over her body, the cropped tank top and the short-shorts that are cut so high they’re practically indecent…and they tell him everything he needs to know. He knows the scars, he knows the ink. He’s traced it all with his lips, tasted salt and tragedy and self-destruction. “I just came in for a beer. Do I look like I can’t afford one?” This is delivered with an adorable crinkle of her nose and a suggestive self pat-down. Lucky knows a con when he hears it…and a red flag when he sees it.

“I’ll buy the lady’s beer,” he tells Big Ed, sliding into the circle and positioning himself in front of her like a shield. “And pay back anything you think she might owe.” He quit caring about leaping to the rescue of his fellow man, but that doesn’t extend to the rescue of women. Not when he understands, firsthand, the consequences of sexual assault.

He makes sure to keep his tone amiable as he gives the bikers a spread of 20s out of his stash of cash, wondering all the while exactly where Maxie stashed the biggest guy’s wallet. There is absolutely no room in her clothes…and he’s probably going to be thinking of her hands stroking over her flat stomach and her thighs before he goes to bed tonight. Though he’s been accused of it, Lucky’s not a saint…he’s just a guy. One who pulls Maxie out of the dive bar and toward the parking lot while she’s yelping with outrage and smacking him with a tiny clutch purse. “I don’t need your help, asshole!”

“It looks to me like you do. What were you trying to accomplish in there?” he demands.

“Nothing I didn’t deserve.” It’s a horrible thing to say about herself, and she does so without even flinching. No, she saves that for when she yanks her wrist out of his grip and makes a show of rubbing it like it hurts. “God, who do you think you are?”

She’s still acting like she genuinely doesn’t know. Lucky’s gut twists, and the back of his neck starts itching something fierce. There is something very, very wrong here…and, for the moment, all he can do is play along. “Lucky Spencer,” he murmurs as he unlocks his bike and shoves the chain into a saddlebag. “Part-time hero, full-time wanderer. Who are you?”

“You’re telling me you don’t know?” The question puts her on the immediate defensive. “Didn’t you think I’m some Maxie person?”

“Well, you’re not exactly responding to the name, are you?” he points out, keeping his voice as mild as possible, as if he’s talking a jumper off a ledge. “So what should I call you?”

“Felicia Andrews. Good time girl.” Both the name and the designation are disturbing beyond words, but it’s the look in her eyes that really knocks him off balance. Sharp. Cold. Calculating. There isn’t one hint of the cute girl who used to flirt and giggle and coax laughs from him in return. The lights are on, but Maxie Jones isn’t home.

Lucky keeps an extra helmet for emergencies, and this certainly qualifies. He hands it to her as he unhooks his own. “Then come with me. I’ll show you the good time you’re looking for.” 

She gives him a very emphatic once-over, big blue eyes lingering on the crotch of his faded jeans. “You think you can handle me, Big Guy?” This time, the insult has even more bite…like her teeth sliding against painfully sensitive skin.

He and Maxie only slept together a handful of times, years ago, and he was high for most of it…but he remembers, with surprising clarity, the feel of her mouth on him.

Lucky bites back a groan, swinging one leg over his Harley and shifting so the seat doesn’t chafe against the suddenly tight rise of his zipper. “I can learn,” he assures, buckling his helmet. For both of their sakes, he *has* to learn.

**

Somewhere between mile six and mile 52, he decides to call her “Andie.” It’s better than using her mother’s name--that’s a whole level of weird he doesn’t even want to get into--because he barely remembers her father at all and, even then, it’s as “Frisco” Jones, not Andrew.

Maxie accepts the nickname with a roll of her eyes and a mocking curl of her chapped pink lips. “Whatever gets you off.” She shrugs, before flouncing off to the gas station’s vending machine with money from the biker’s stolen wallet--which, as it turns out, she’d enterprisingly tucked into one of her boots.

Whatever gets him off. The things on that particular list are few and far between. He’s been positively ascetic for months, thinking of anything and everything but sex. But an hour in Maxie’s company, and he’s suddenly breathing it. Bracketed by her angular hips and slender thighs, wearing her practically skin to skin every time the bike takes a curve. He can nearly taste her on the air: cheap motel soap and that bittersweet scent of her perpetual heartbreak.

She comes back with two bottles of water, tossing him one and then proceeding to uncap the other and spill half its contents over her head. He’s transfixed, of course. The rivulets travel swiftly south, plastering her candy apple red bangs to her forehead, running down the smooth column of her throat and soaking through her tank top, revealing the contours of her bra. It takes more than a little effort to return to her face.

Once there, it’s not her smug grin that he lingers on. It’s the thin, raised scar along her right temple. Head trauma. Fairly recent, judging by the redness at the edges of the line. Lucky’s no expert on memory loss--even though he’s experienced it himself--but her strange behavior makes a lot more sense now.

His intense scrutiny seems to set her off balance. She caps her water and tosses her hair, flicking him with damp in the process. “Like what you see?”

Not remotely. And entirely too much. Lucky takes a long drink of water and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re very pretty, Andie, but I’m not interested,” he lies, with his best choirboy expression. “You’ll be safe with me,” he adds, which is actually the utmost truth.

“You take that ‘part-time hero’ crap pretty seriously, huh?” Her eyes go distant, and it almost looks like she’s remembering something. He can only *hope* she’s remembering something. “I think I knew a guy like you once,” is all she says aloud.

“Oh, yeah?” He feigns disinterest, checking the cinches on his gear before sliding back into the seat. Spinelli, he thinks. Somewhere, deep down, she’s recalling Spinelli, hopelessly devoted to her and determined to save her from herself. “What happened to him?”

Maxie’s smile is ferocious. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “I broke him.”

Not for the first time since he saw her in that Allentown dive bar, Lucky thinks of just how easily he’d shatter beneath her hands. 

**

They ride until the sun comes down to meet the ground, dragging the dark curtain of night behind it. Lucky pulls off to a roadside motel with a blinking ‘vacancy’ sign. He rifles through his pack for an ID and matching credit card with a suitable alias. Maxie peers over his shoulder, pressing against him without any acknowledgment that they’re parked and she doesn’t have to hold on. Or maybe she knows that full well. Because she laughs into his ear, her lips too close to nipping at the lobe. “Johnny Coltrane? What kind of fake name is that?”

That she still wouldn’t recognize the name of a blues musician if he walked up and introduced himself is a welcome bit of familiar in the midst of the surreal. So is her laugh. “It’s either Coltrane or Lars Ulrich…and I have a feeling a rural desk clerk would recognize Metallica first.” Lucky hops off the Harley before he can get too comfortable, striding off to the motel office without looking back to see if she’ll follow. He just has to trust that she will. That something inside her knows to stay with him.

By the time he has the keys to a room at the far end of the lot, she’s cozied up next to him, hanging off his arm and giving the bored clerk--who didn’t even blink at the Coltrane--the distinct impression that they should be paying for their accommodations by the hour. He’s too relieved to be scandalized, and just thankful enough to turn and brush his lips across her temple. Right along the scar. Maxie shivers, and the devil in her eyes gives the angel on his shoulder a “come hither.”

He doesn’t speak to that look until they’re alone, and he’s going through the contents of his saddlebags and pack while she tests out the mattress on one of the ancient double beds. “I didn’t bring you with me for that. You don’t have to sleep with me.”

She crosses her legs at the ankles, swinging them back and forth as she leans back on her palms. “Then why *did* you bring me along? Why didn’t you just leave me at that bar?”

The answer is easy. “Because I knew a girl like you once.”

“What happened to her?”

That answer is easy, too. “I…I don’t really know, Andie. I think she got a little lost.”

“You married?” She glances at his ring finger, devoid of any telltale lines.

“Divorced,” he replies, automatically. It’s not so much forgetting his brief marriage to Siobhan as honoring the longevity of his relationship with Elizabeth. Ex-wife or no, she’s his oldest living friend and the mother of his boys. He will always love her, even if there are large chunks of time where he can’t stand to be near her.

“Let me guess: She’s perfect. A saint. And now you’re spoiled for other women.”

It’s funny how close the tart description is to something Maxie would *knowingly* say about Elizabeth. Maybe that’s why he rewards her authenticity. “Actually, she slept with my brother,” he admits. “It kind of killed the romance for good.”

Amnesia or no, she finds that hilarious. She falls back on the bed, laughing. Her tank top rides up, baring the flat expanse of her belly and the tiny ring in her navel. She’s gotten way too thin, but there’s a basic, raw sexiness to her that can’t be denied. That he never *could* deny. Lucky loses his breath and turns to find it in the depths of his backpack.

“I could blow you, you know. It’s no big deal. To some people, it doesn’t even count as sex.”

That is *not* something he wants to hear from a girl he’s known since she was four years old. Even if she doesn’t remember a minute of it. His hands shake as he pulls out a clean T-shirt for her to wear. “That’s okay. I think we’ve gotten more than enough mileage out of your mouth today.”

Facing her again and finding her stripped completely naked should not be a surprise. Not after she so casually offered him a blowjob. Somehow, he’s shocked anyway. Stunned silent by the hard points of her nipples and the dark blond hair between her thighs and the scars from her heart surgeries. He’s a total stranger to her, but she is so terribly familiar to him. And so is the road to Hell.

“Goodnight, Andie,” he whispers, with Herculean effort, before he throws her the T-shirt and turns off the lights.

**

Maxie uses up all the hot water in the shower, which is perfect as the bracing cold is his body’s only defense against her attempts at seduction. 

“I’m damaged,” she used to tell him, constant apologies for their affair falling from her lips and shining in her eyes. She gave him so much sorry that he ran out of ways to tell her to stop. The girl she is now, with no memory of everything she’s lost and everyone who loves her, has no regrets at all. All she wants is the carnage.

They have more than 200 miles to go before they reach home, and he’s in no rush to get there. Especially if the proximity inspires her to bolt with nothing but the clothes on her back, like she obviously did before. She had to have hitchhiked to get this far *from* Port Charles with no cash, and he doesn’t want to know what she bartered for the rides. 

Prayers won’t be enough to keep her safe. He needs strength. The kind of character his parents instilled in him when he was young. If he thought hanging a sheet between them would help, he’d do it, but he has no doubt that Maxie--Felicia, Andie, whatever she wants to answer to--would bring the walls of Jericho down with one tug. 

When he comes out of the bathroom, she’s wearing another one of his T-shirts over her shorts. It’s soft and blue and seen better days, but it goes with her eyes. He hopes that means there’s a bit of the fashionista lurking beneath the surface. She’s curled up against the headboard of the bed she claimed, knees drawn up to her chin. “Lucky.” She says his name like she’s testing out the syllables, mulling over the definition.

“It doesn’t fit,” he assures her. He’s a 28-year-old, twice divorced, once widowed ex-cop, ex-addict, with a dead son who wasn’t even biologically his. He’s the furthest thing from lucky.

“Is it short for something?”

*You know what it’s short for.* Irrationally, he wishes he could yell at her. *You know! It’s your cousin’s name, too!* But Lucky is a good man, a kind man, and he doesn’t shout. Not unless you’ve broken his heart by screwing his brother. “Lucas Lorenzo Spencer, Jr.” 

The faint flicker of recognition flashes in her eyes before disappearing. She looks lost and young and innocent, her “good-time girl” persona momentarily leashed. “I get it, you know. Why you don’t want to touch me. I wouldn’t want to touch me either. It’s the kind of dirty you can’t wash off.”

His breath escapes him in a whoosh, and tears spring to his eyes. Shooting him would’ve been kinder…and he definitely knows from being shot. “Max--“ Because she sounds like Maxie, the cynical woman who used to turn off the vivacious façade for a little while and sit across from him at Jake’s, picking the label off her beer and counting out her sins. The Maxie he *has* touched. “Andie, don’t talk that way about yourself. It’s not true.”

“You don’t know me, Lucas Lorenzo Spencer, Jr.”

Yes, he does. But, more than that, he’s *been* her…he’s been all of those broken pieces scattered at rock bottom. He crosses the room, joining her on the bed and reaching for her hand. Just her hand. It’s small, fragile in his grip; her fingers are cracked, the nails bitten to the quick and unpainted. It always amazed him how someone so small, so slight, could craft a big personality, such a loud, energetic voice. She has none of that bubbliness now, none of that volume…and when he curls his fingers around hers, a tiny gasp escapes her lips.

The ditzy diva is a role she played, of course. Something she slipped on like borrowed Ferragamos and Versace from Crimson’s sample closets. She squealed for Spinelli, trilled for him, fluttering her lashes to make them feel smart and manly…only dropping the act when it was just too much effort to stay on script. Late nights at Jake’s, early ones at her sister’s grave--Maxie shared those moments with him as freely as her regrets over their affair. It’s ironic, but Felicia Andrews is probably the closest she’s been to consistently acting like herself in years.

“You’re not dirty.” He strokes his thumb over her chapped knuckles. “You’re clean and strong and whole. You just don’t remember it yet.”

Her eyes widen, so blue that looking into them is like taking a straight dive into the sea. “You can’t possibly be real. Saints like you don’t exist.”

“I’m no saint. I’m just a guy. And I’ve seen too many women suffer to ever want that kind of pain for you.”

“Lucky…” Again, there is a faint flicker of recognition in her eyes, but it’s quickly dampened by bitter tears. Her mouth draws into a thin, hard line and she yanks out of his grip. “Don’t be nice to me. It’s not a language I understand.” 

Her freed hand slides down his chest. Lower. Makes it absolutely clear what she’s fluent in. If there is any lingering doubt about his lack of sainthood, it’s obliterated by the unequivocal response of his body to the seductive brush of her fingers. Her names tangle on his tongue, amnesiac aliases catching on a groan as he scrambles back so fast that he smacks into the headboard. The first time she jerked him off in a hospital linen closet, when they were both still trying to pretend it was about mourning Jesse, flashes across his eyelids in Technicolor. The wrongness of it, the rush of the forbidden, was almost as good as being high. 

Maxie’s slate is blank, though. There’s no echo for her in teasing the rise under his straining fly and grinning up at him like sweet damnation. “Scared?” she purrs, with a triumph that sounds far more caustic than celebratory.

Lucky slides off the bed, grabbing his keys off the nightstand. “Terrified,” he manages to say in a reasonable imitation of deadpan. He slams out in search of a poker game, knowing full well that he’s leaving the biggest gamble behind.

**

They make it into upstate New York after three days of leisurely riding. There are a few stops to gas up, to sleep, to trounce guys at a couple of dive bars and honkytonks at cards. He calls Dante from a Target girls’ section, while Maxie’s in the dressing room trying on a succession of sparkly princess t-shirts and shorts designed to torture him.

“The van crashed on the way to her hearing,” his former partner tells him, the grim professionalism coming through loud and clear over the line. “We found traces of her blood at the scene, but it was like she vanished. We’ve been looking for her ever since. Mac and Patrick are outta their minds with worry, man. Lulu, too. Spinelli’s practically been living in the squad room--which, let me tell you, is no fun for anyone.” 

It’s all details and small talk and a quick hang-up after that. Lucky tries not to look at the pixie-cute redhead in the glittery pink t-shirt like he’s going to miss her. He tries to ignore the come-ons and the long, sultry looks and struggles to school his reactions. The worst is when they’re on the road, with her fitted snugly against his back, her thighs cradling his and her arms tight around his waist. He could get used to the feeling…and it’s that thought that always makes him pull into a rest stop or a gas station.

On one such occasion, she stays on the bike, lounging on the seat like she’s posing for a calendar. “Where are we going?” she asks, raking her hands through her hair to cure it of helmet head. It’s sexy not because she’s trying to be, but because she just *is*.

“Straight to Hell” is what he wants to say. “East” is what he actually says. “And a little north. There are a lot of gorgeous little towns up there by Buffalo and the Canadian border.” Explaining Port Charles’ convoluted geography is an exercise in futility. He has to take her back, of course. There’s no question. Her family needs her. Spinelli needs her. Maybe surrounded by familiar places and things, she’ll come back to herself instead of working so hard to escape.

Ironic, since he hasn’t even set foot in Port Charles in months. Elizabeth periodically e-mails him pictures of the boys, and he barely recognizes Aiden as the baby he left behind. He’s a toddler, sunny and bright, with his mom’s stunning dark eyes. He’s becoming a little person…all while Lucky becomes his father, leaving his family to chase the next adventure.

“Lucky…” No, he’s wrong. Adventure is chasing him. Slipping from the bike to stand before him, five feet of flame-tipped temptation. “Is that where we’re going to say goodbye? The border?”

He can’t answer that. Won’t. “Why are you even staying with me, Andie? I’m not forcing you to come along.”

“You aren’t?” She cocks her head in that flirty-insightful way he’s getting entirely too accustomed to. And then she closes the space between them and settles her mouth on his. It’s a quick kiss, unbearably sweet and over before he can even grasp at her to push her away. She strokes his jaw with her knuckles, and the rasp against his two-day beard is delicious. “Why would *any* woman leave you, Lucky Spencer?” she sighs.

“I don’t know. Ask all the ones who did.” Sarah. Summer. Sam. Siobhan. Elizabeth first, last and always.

Maxie makes a soft sound of sympathy, curling her palm around his neck and teasing the ends of his hair with her fingertips. “I don’t need to ask anyone. I know they’re all stupid.”

He shouldn’t lean into her. He *shouldn’t*. But he does. It’s been too long since anyone touched him with simple tenderness. It’s been too long since anyone looked at him like she does: like he’s worthy. She may not remember, but Maxie has always thought the best of him. Even when he was at his worst. So, it’s out of selfishness that he slides his arms around her waist, that he accepts what should be a simple hug but is way, way more than that.

It’s not wrong if she’s the one making the moves, he rationalizes. It’s not taking advantage if she’s giving it freely. Her hands thread through his hair. Her lips shape endearments against his jaw. Her whole body tells him “I’m yours,” but it’s a beautiful lie, an illusion, and Lucky is not going to break this fragile thing he’s been entrusted with. He breathes her in one more time, returns her gentle, chaste kiss…and lets her go.

Her brows pull together, eyes going stormy with unmistakable hurt. He steps back so he doesn’t touch her. So he doesn’t tell her exactly what he’s thinking. *It’s not rejection. It’s protection. I’m saving us both from a huge mistake.* They had an affair while impaired once, and he’s not about to do it again.

While she’s still bewildered, wounded and entirely too kissable, he goes into the gas station mini-mart to grab a couple of sodas and check in with Dante. “We’ll be home late tomorrow,” he assures, glad to hear that Alexis is working on having Maxie declared unfit to stand trial. “I’ll probably bring her straight into GH so the doctors can check her out.”

“You sound like hell, man. Are you two okay? Did you run into some trouble?”

“Am I talking to my ex-partner, or my brother-in-law?” He slumps against a display of Little Debbie snack cakes, training his eyes out the windows, where Maxie is pacing around his bike and kicking the tires with the sparkly discount store sandals she swapped out for her clunky boots.

“Oh, it’s like that, huh?” Dante chuckles, not smug so much as knowing. “Listen, you and Maxie have always had a connection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile as much as when she drops by the squad room. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Of course you’re gonna get closer while you’re out there together on the road.”

“But she doesn’t even remember me, Dante. What kind of sicko does that make me?” The kind of sicko that can still taste her lips…that wants more.

“She doesn’t have to remember you to *know* you.” Dante exhales, noisily. “I’d know your sister anywhere, Lucky. I’d feel her. And I bet Maxie feels you, too. Maybe not in her head, but in her heart.”

He has to hang up after that. It’s too much. Too intimate. Maxie had a *crush* on him, that’s all. A crush and then a destructive sexual attraction. To make more of it, to call what’s between them ‘love’, is terrifying on every level. When he pays for the sodas and goes back out to her, he hopes his face doesn’t show a single trace of that fear. 

Hers telegraphs her confusion in vivid Technicolor. “You care about me.” It’s an accusation. She snaps the follow-up “Why?” like a slap across his face. “Why would you even give a shit, Lucky? I don’t need to be treated like glass. I don’t need your respect. If you’re going to put me up on a pedestal, you should’ve just left me in that dive.”

“That was not an option.” He slides the 20 oz bottles into a saddlebag and tries not to look at her. If he does, he’ll lose what little bit of self-imposed honor he has left and probably jeopardize her memory recovery in the process. “You couldn’t stay there, Andie. You need to go home.”

“And you know where that is?”

*With me.* It’s a thought that comes from nowhere…and everywhere. Lucky can’t outrun it. He can’t outride it. All he can do is keep the devil at his back.

**

They stop for the last time just a few hours outside Port Charles. Beechers Corners. A choice only Lucky can truly appreciate. A choice he starts to regret from the moment the motel room door closes behind them and Maxie drops their bags on the floor between the beds. The ache’s been expanding inside him for hours. Days. Years. 

He can’t stay away from her, even though he should. He wants her too much, even though he shouldn’t. Maybe she senses that now. Maybe it seeped through their clothes as their bodies aligned on the bike and they leaned into the curve of the road. Because she’s not angry at him anymore. Just…quiet. She unpacks toiletries and t-shirts and turns down sheets, all in an eerily domestic way, while he feigns interest in CNN and flips through the sports channels. The whole time, there’s a fragile tension between them. As delicate as soap bubbles.

She twists off the cap of a now-warm Diet Coke, taking what he’s come to think of as her “spot” against the headboard of the other bed. “We didn’t have to stop here, did we? I mean…we’re not that far from where you live, right? From where *we* live?” Somewhere along the way, she’s either remembered or accepted that he’s taking her home. 

“No. We’re close.” He clicks off the television, sets the remote aside so his hands are free to bunch up the bedcovers in a paltry show of restraint. “We could’ve reached Port Charles tonight.” 

“So why are you putting off the inevitable?” It’s a loaded question. She’s not just asking one thing, she’s asking a hundred.

“I don’t know.” He should stay safely across from her. Distant. Dancing on the edge of desperation. But he moves, joining her against the headboard, toeing off his shoes and kicking them to the floor. “I don’t know why I’m doing any of this. Maybe I did when I saw you in that bar…but I sure as hell don’t know anymore.” 

“I don’t think that’s true.” She shifts to face him, her knees brushing along his thigh. It shouldn’t be seductive. It’s knees. They’re clothed. But it’s like matches striking the side of the box. Instant flame. Her eyebrows rise in tacit acknowledgment. “We both know what this is.”

Stupid. Reckless. A complete betrayal of her trust. Utterly and completely unavoidable. He whispers her name. Her real one. And she covers his lips with her fingertips.

“I want to be with you. You want to be with me. Let it be that simple tonight, Lucky.” Her palm is cool against his fever-hot skin. Her eyes are so sure, so confident, that he wonders if she’s just been playing him this whole time: pretending to forget when she remembers it all. But his questions get lost in the cool sweetness of her mouth. In the slide of her arms around him and the perfect fit. She kisses like they’re picking up a conversation interrupted mid-sentence. He kisses her back with everything he’s been too paralyzed to say. It lasts for paragraphs, that one touch of their lips. Introducing tongues and teeth and writing a whole speech about want and need. 

She tugs his t-shirt out of his jeans. He brushes aside the straps of her tank top. They’re not strangers. They’re *not*. She knows him, and he’s re-learning her with every passing minute. He chokes on her name, trying to hold it back, to make this as momentary as she wants it to be, but he can’t help himself. It’s not sordid, what they do together. It’s not a fast, filthy fuck in a no-tell motel. He takes his time, kissing the map made by her scars, tracing the contours of her tattoos. He makes love to her. Sober and rational and completely aware of the soft, slow sensation of their bodies interlocking. He may not really remember their first few times together, but this, he’ll never forget.

**

In the morning, they clean up and dress in silence. Not precisely awkward, but not comfortable either. He packs up their things. She straightens up the bed, like smoothing the wrinkles from the sheets somehow erases what they did between them. It doesn’t. It can’t. Not this time.

He reaches out for her when she brushes past him on the way to the bathroom, dragging her to him with one hand curled around her hip. They kiss like it’s the last time, messy and desperate and a tear-soaked goodbye. Afterward, she just leans into him, resting her forehead against his. “Oh, Lucky,” she whispers. “I wish you were mine.” 

He wants to tell her that he is. He knows she’ll never believe him. So they hit the road, with him breathing in the feel of her tucked against him, memorizing it for the days, weeks and years ahead. They’re just outside the city limits when Maxie tugs on his jacket, gesturing for him to pull the bike over to the shoulder. 

“What? What is it? Are you okay?” As he yanks off his helmet and twists around to face her, the words spill from him in a rush. “Maxie…” 

She unhooks her own helmet with shaking hands. She’s shaking all over. And she doesn’t even bother feigning ignorance now. Memory is there in her eyes. Memory and fear. Not Wendy, not Tinkerbell…she’s Peter Pan, absolutely scared to the core of growing up. She doesn’t speak right away, doesn’t turn on the act with the volume and the words that trip over each other in their haste to get out into the world. Almost two minutes goes by as she wrings her hands and tries to marshal her unsteady breaths.

“Maxie?” he prompts, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear, trailing his fingertips down her cheek. Her eyes are so bright and wet that he’s never going to be able to look at the sky without thinking of her crying. 

“My mom ran away once, you know.” She stops, laughs and shakes her head. “I mean, my mom ran away a *lot*, it’s what she does, but there was this one time before I was born…where she had amnesia and went on the road with some guy. She told me she was avoiding her life for a while, that she needed the time away to figure out what was important. And obviously it didn’t work for all that long. She came home to Frisco, and they had me and Georgie…but we weren’t important *enough*.”

She could be talking about his father. Worse, she could be talking about *him*. Lucky can barely say anything over the stale, guilty lump in his throat. But he doesn’t need to interject, because she’s not done.

“All I’ve ever wanted in my life is to be important, Lucky. And all I’ve managed to be is completely selfish.” There’s a hitch in her voice, a flash of some specific image in the haunted look in her eyes. “I hurt Robin and Spinelli and Mac and you…why should I go back there? Why shouldn’t I just run away, until I just fall off the face of the earth? It should’ve been *me* who died. Not Georgie. Not Robin. I shouldn’t be here, reminding everybody of what a horrible trade it is.”

“Stop.” He finally gets the words out, pushes past his deadbeat dad issues and focuses solely on her beautiful, devastated face. “Stop it, Maxie. It’s not a horrible trade. Your family loves you. You’re all Mac has left. Spinelli worships you. Emma and Patrick need you right now, because you’re one of the people who knew Robin best.” He thumbs away the tears coursing down her cheeks. “They *need* you. *I* need you. You are warm and funny and loving, and the minute you walk through the door, the room gets a little brighter. You may not see it or believe it, but it’s true. No matter how dark you feel, you’re the light. You’re *our* light.”

“God, Lucky, that’s awful.” She manages to smile through her misery, which makes the tightness in his throat almost painful. “I am so not worth the big, dramatic speech.”

“Yes, you are.” He manages a smile, too, dredging it up from the depths of his own self-involvement. “You called me a ‘saint.’ I’m not one. I’m a guy who walked out on his ex-wife and his kids. Who ran off the Ireland and married a stranger. Who almost got addicted to pills again. You want to have a contest about worth? I can give you a run for your money. But I want to give you something else, Maxie. I want to give you *hope*.” 

A sound that’s half-laugh and half-sob works its way up from her throat. “Seriously…do you have these things prepared? Do you put them on note cards or something?”

“Or something.” There’s no point in saying anything else. In giving her another thing to shrug off. Instead, he opts for the one thing she can’t argue with. He writes over their farewell kiss from this morning with an emphatic “not yet, this isn’t over, don’t give up.” He practically drags her the few inches across the bike, into his lap, angling his mouth so he takes her anguish and her love in equal measure.

Because it *is* love. He gets that now, isn’t afraid to acknowledge and name it. Not when the alternative is so much worse. He’s known her since they were kids, liked her, hated her and wanted her in turns. They’re more alike than she could possibly understand…the product of parents who were always looking for the next big thing, too starry-eyed to see what was right in front of them. But he’s done repeating Luke Spencer’s mistakes. He sees what’s right in front of him…and he’s not letting it go.

Lucky kisses her until she’s dizzy, until they’re *both* dizzy. And then he slides her helmet back on and turns them towards home.

**

They’re all waiting for her at the hospital. Her family. Spinelli. Dante and Lulu. Even Alexis. In another story, maybe Lucky would slip away, superfluous in the face of all the hugs and kisses and cries of “What did you do to your hair?” and “You scared the Hell out of us!” But in this one, he doesn’t leave her side. He promised to keep her safe, and he’s going to keep that promise forever. So he holds her hand as Patrick tells her, “There’s nothing to forgive.” He slides his arm around her shoulders as Alexis sums up her legal situation. And, when everyone finally gives them some space, he pushes her wheelchair into the exam room and sits with her as Steve checks her vitals.

It seems like hours until it’s just the two of them again. It probably is, though the hands on the giant wall clock haven’t moved. Maxie looks around like she’s surprised by the sudden calm…and then her gaze finds his. Her eyes are tired; her smile is, too, but he can’t get enough of either. He’ll never have enough. “I knew a guy like you once,” she says, leaning back with her palms flat on the exam table.

“Oh, yeah?” He leaves the metal-back chair that Steve parked him in with a stern and faintly disapproving “stay put” and climbs up beside her, teasingly bumping her shoulder with his. “So, what happened to him, this guy that you used to know?”

The curve of her mouth is gently wicked against his cheek. “He believed in me.” She whispers it like a secret into his ear. “Thank you.” 

What he murmurs against her pulse is no less soft, but perfectly fit for public ears. “He loves you.” And he plans to tell her that over and over again…until the day she lets herself believe in him and the day after that--when she finally believes in herself.

 

\--end--

November 18, 2012


End file.
